George R.R. Martin, in an interview with NYTimes, opened up about some of the issues he’s had with the HBO series, and while most of it is in the small details, he is seriously bummed by the fact that — with only 10 episodes a season — the showrunners necessarily have to leave out scenes he considers key.

“I wish we had more episodes,” he said, speaking from his home in Santa Fe, N.M. “I’d love to have 13 episodes. With 13 episodes, we could include smaller scenes that we had to cut, scenes that make the story deeper and richer.”

Specifically, he cited an argument Arya and Sansa had in season one, after they’d been invited for tea and lemon cakes with Queen Cersei, a scene that he thought added texture and deepened the relationship between Sansa and Arya.

He also expressed some consternation between writing the book and putting together a TV series, noting that he doesn’t have to take his editor’s suggestions, but that the networks force them onto him (and the showrunners).

He is, however, careful to put some distance between himself and the series, saying that he’s only a co-exec producer, writes only one episode a year, and doesn’t have too much say in how the season is written. That said, he does have one major bone to pick, which he’s written about on his blog: The Iron Throne on the show is nothing like the one he describes in the book.

“The HBO throne has become iconic,” he has written on his blog. “And well it might. It’s a terrific design, and it has served the show very well. There are replicas and paperweights of it in three different sizes. Everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves.”

But, he continued: “It’s not the Iron Throne I see when I’m working on ‘THE WINDS OF WINTER.’ It’s not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books … HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court … my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and asymmetric … The HBO throne is none of those things.”

Yeah, but the ugly and asymmetric throne wouldn’t have looked nearly as good on the set of Parks and Recreation.